This invention relates in general to the World Wide Web (the Web) and, more specifically, relates to a system and method for providing differentiated services to a subset of customers of a content Web site on the Internet.
On the Web a given companies"" competitors can be only a few clicks away. As more and more companies establish Web sites to conduct business electronically, competition has become intense in acquiring and retaining valuable customers, as customers can easily go to another Web site from their browsers.
One technique for favoring and rewarding valuable customers that is used in non-Web based enterprises is the use of differentiated services or service levels, wherein a set customers is divided into at least two sub-sets, and where one sub-set is treated in a preferential fashion over the other(s). The differentiation can be based on, as examples, an overall amount of customer purchases, or an amount of customer purchases within some recent interval of time, or on some demographic group that the customer happens to fall into (e.g., age, residence location, marital status, job type, length of employment, etc.). The use of the differentiated services could provide a most-favored customer group with access to special sales events, pre-mailing of some types of promotional materials, preferential seating, additional discounts, the use of platinum, gold and silver credit cards, frequent flyer programs, and various club membership programs.
From a user""s perspective, an important aspect of Web usage is response time. However, there is no known content provider or other type of site on the World Wide Web that provides, as an incentive for rewarding and retaining a sub-set of preferred customers, an improved or enhanced response time. Hence, a need exists for providing differentiated services to attract and retain preferred customers the use to the Web to access a content provider.
One system known to the inventors, described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/473,613, filed Dec. 12, 1999, xe2x80x9cMethod and System for Dispatching Client Sessions within a Cluster of Servers Connected to the World Wide Web,xe2x80x9d Lamberton et al. disclose a method for load balancing among a cluster of servers. An objective is to achieve load balancing among the servers by dispatching all the requests coming from the same user session to the same server.
Another system known to the inventors is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/947,361, filed Dec. 23, 1996, xe2x80x9cAffinity-Based Router and Routing Methodxe2x80x9d, where D. M. Dias et al. disclose a method for routing packets to a preferred server having affinity with the client.
Another system known to the inventors is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/544,311, filed Jul. 27, 1999, xe2x80x9cSystem and Method for Allowing Differentiated Service and Load Control in a Clustered Web Site,xe2x80x9d where D. M. Dias et al. disclose a method for differentiated services and load control. Differentiated services are provided within a clustered web site based on attributes of incoming requests. An aspect of the Dias et al. invention is achieving load control within a single clustered web site by dropping a certain class of requests with specific attributes.
Thus, there is a need to provide a system and method for implementing differentiated services on the Web so that content providers can implement preferred membership programs for their customers. Preferably the differentiated services use a collaboration among many parties, including content providers, ISPs and content hosters.
It is a first object and advantage of this invention to provide differentiated services in the form of faster response times to preferred customers of a Web site.
It is a further object and advantage of this invention to implement a membership program that is offered by a content provider and that is carried out collaboratively by ISPs on the network edge and by content hosters on the network core.
It is another object and advantage of this invention to maintain priority tables specific to a content provider based on membership programs, and to combine priority tables at an ISP and/or a content hoster, and to translate the priority tables into a resource allocation table.
The foregoing and other problems are overcome and the objects and advantages are realized by methods and apparatus in accordance with embodiments of this invention.
A system and method are disclosed for providing differentiated services to a subset of users or customers of a content web site on the Internet. The use of this invention enables a content web site to offer various xe2x80x9cclubxe2x80x9d membership programs to different preferred customers, and enables these customers to enjoy different levels of service experience in accessing the content on the Web. The different levels of service experience are provided by cooperation among multiple clusters of servers on the Internet. The clusters of servers may be owned by various commercial entities, such as Internet service providers (ISPs) on the network edge and the content hosters with server farms on the network core.
This invention provides a technique to attract and retain valuable customers for a content provider Web site by offering differentiated services for customers accessing the site. Such differentiated services can be in the form of, for example, faster response times. In this example, once a customer is identified as a member of a special group, his/her requests receive a higher priority and are serviced accordingly.
This type of differentiated service is especially effective in gaining customer loyalty when traffic is heavy and it is desirable, or even critical, for a customer to have a fast access to Web content. One example is access to a customer""s account at an on-line financial site during periods of extreme market volatility.
In light of the current Internet infrastructure, a number of parties may need to collaborate in order to facilitate the implementation of differentiated services by content provider web sites. Individual customers typically access the web site of a content provider, such as www.cnn.com or www.nytimes.com, by connecting their devices, such as a PC, via an ISP (Internet service provider). Hence, an ISP should work with content provider web sites to implement differentiated services in its points of access. Furthermore, more and more content providers are apt to outsource their web sites to a content hoster, which typically sets up one or more data centers equipped with many servers (e.g., a server farm) that are connected to the Internet. Hence, it is preferred that the content hosters on the network core also participate in the deployment of differentiated services.
To implement differentiated services on the Web, in accordance with these teachings, each content provider assigns priorities to its customers. The priority assignment is maintained in a priority table, which may also be referred to as a service level table. Various priority tables from different content providers are then provided to the servers of an ISP and to the servers of a content hoster. Since the ISP or content hoster typically service requests for different content providers, those different content-provider-specific priority tables are preferably merged and translated into a single resource requirement table based on the priorities. Should resources not be sufficient to service certain class(es) of requests, cooperation between different clusters of servers can be arranged.
Providing such differentiated services on the Web enables the creation of business values to many parties. First, the content providers benefit with improved customer retention and acquisition. Once a base of loyal customers are acquired and retained, the content providers may also monetize these customers by charging higher fees for targeted advertisements. Secondly, the users of the differentiated services benefit because they receive better services in the way of improved response times. Thirdly, the content hosters and the Internet service providers may benefit because they may potentially receive credits from the content providers for implementing the differentiated services for their customers.
Depending on the business arrangement and the total resources available on an ISP and the content hoster, the highest priority customers of some content providers may not always be provided the expected level of improved response time or, in an extreme case, may not be serviced at all. Thus, a need is also recognized for considering various options should such conditions occur.
In accordance with a presently preferred embodiment of this invention, differentiated services are provided by a content provider on the Web in the form of faster response times in accessing the content provider""s web site. In one embodiment of the present invention, a content provider attracts and retains its valuable customers by offering various club membership programs, such as gold, silver and bronze memberships. Each class of memberships is provided a different level of (average) response time. Although the response time may not be guaranteed, these different levels of response time reflect the different amount of resources allocated to achieve them. For example, regardless of what load condition an ISP is experiencing, a higher priority request is serviced sooner than a lower priority request, thereby providing differentiated services.
Once each content provider implements its own differentiated services, it maintains a priority table indicating the user ID and the user""s corresponding priority. These content-provider-specific priority tables are provided to ISPs and to content hosters. An ISP or a content hoster merges the tables into a single ISP-specific or content-hoster-specific resource allocation table for the various priority classes. The merging of one or more priority tables from various content providers can be made dependent on business arrangements made between the content providers and an ISP or content hoster.